Tomorrow, Hillary Clinton is likely to clinch the U.S. Presidency. Before we progressives return to our pre-election routines, we might take a few moments to pause and reflect on the mysterious cadre of white evangelicals who nearly changed the course of the vote. To confirm that Donald Trump’s biggest pool of supporters are white and evangelical Protestants, check out this recent Public Religion Research Institute poll: http://www.prri.org/spotlight/religion-vote-2016/.

Forgetting about these evangelicals for the next few years is an option. To pretend they don’t exist is all too easy—otherwise, we wouldn’t be feeling as if we’ve been yanked out of our can’t-we-all-get-along, rational bubble. We’ve been forced, by some of them, to confront what seems like a new reality of racism, sexism, and more. Many of us are shaking our heads, muttering “I don’t understand my fellow Americans any more.”

Were we aware of such white evangelicals but didn’t realize there were so many? True, most evangelical Protestants don’t live where we live—on the internet or out in the actual world. We tend to maintain a strict wall of separation between “us” and “them,” defriending or refusing Facebook friend requests from those with unacceptable religious or political views. We also tend to live in cities while, since the Civil War (see Casanova in the Reference section), evangelical Protestants, finding the city a “largely foreign, unregenerate, and dangerous environment,” prefer to live in rural areas, hence giving rise to the whole blue state, red state business. Evangelical Protestants, often by choice, remain or settle in the fringes of cities or in the hinterlands, out of the sight and mind of progressive urban folk.

Or, did we pretend they don’t exist because some of their views are alien or so horrid that we, progressive urbanites, can’t fathom that they really really mean what they say when they say it? Were we in denial?

In denial or not, ‘those’ people will return to the public square in a mere two years for the 2018 mid-term elections. As Peter Wehner (a Republican!) pointed out in a NYT op-ed today, “tens of millions of Americans will vote for [Trump] and believe deeply in him. But if these forces are not defeated, what happened this year will be replicated in one form or another…” Clearly, progressives are not the only ones who are worried.

At least two questions should continue to demand our attention and that of moderate Republicans long after we’ve caught our breath, recovered from watching the polls, and are finally able to get a decent night’s sleep.

First question: why did white evangelical Protestants vote for Trump, a candidate who is casual about his religious faith?

The answer: such accommodations are nothing new. Almost 250 years ago, dissenting Baptists allied themselves with America’s deist “fathers” to put an end to the vestiges of established churches in the newly minted United States. The Baptists wanted to practice their own religion and were anxious to cast off any demands that the established church might make of them. In addition, they balked at the idea that their tax dollars should be used by the state to support congregations other than their own. No surprise there. Like most people, they were driven by self-interest.

Today, the problem to be resisted at all cost by some white evangelical Protestants is the perceived destruction of their way of life by liberal intellectuals with their “secular prejudice” (see Casanova). The object of their ire—which causes these evangelicals to lose sleep at night—is the “deestablishment” of their brand of Protestant public morality and the establishment of choice-of-conduct along with pluralistic sets of norms and ways of life.

If asked to explain what the proper brand of Protestant public morality in the United States should look like, they would describe something akin to the traditional gender roles and family structures of the 1950s. This kind of “right living,” in the words of Jerry Falwell, “must be re-established as an American way of life… The authority of Bible morality must once again be recognized as the legitimate guiding principle of our nation.”

Protestant public morality, for some evangelicals (not all!) is under siege; it is under attack; everywhere forces are at work undermining Biblically-grounded right living. Falwell writes: “[We advocate the passage of family protection legislation which would] counteract disruptive federal intervention into family life and encourage the restoration of the family unit, parental authority, and a climate of traditional authority…and reinforce traditional husband-and-wife relationships.”

State and secular civil society, some evangelicals believe, penetrates into their homes, schools, neighborhoods and impose norms and ways of life to which they are categorically opposed. No wonder they have mobilized against these attempts to colonize their communities.

The bottom line: For some white evangelicals, especially fundamentalists, this a time of dire emergency! And desperate times call for desperate measures. Trump may not have roots in their community but he talks their language, understands their values, and promises, with the authority of a messiah (“I am your voice” he says), to mobilize against the forces and communities that threaten right living and the “authority of Bible morality” (Falwell again).

Given the analysis above, the answer to this question may now seem obvious. The United States, for white evangelicals, is certainly not doing better. They tend to be blind, Casanova explains, to the threats of the market. But they are, and they likely will continue to be drawn to candidates who promise to re-establish their brand of Protestant ethics and end, in Casanova’s words, “the legally protected pluralistic system of norms in the public sphere of American civil society.”

By the end of Tuesday, there will likely be cause for progressives to celebrate. White evangelical supporters of Trump, in contrast, will see his defeat as yet another indication of just how pervasive and how intractable are the forces that they believe are arrayed against them.

Theistic religions ask us to put God’s law—a higher, universal law that applies to the human family—above the needs of our immediate family. We feel the tug to care for our families more piquantly than we do the tug to care for strangers. Religions ask us to give the same or higher priority to non-family members or to some abstract “humanity.”

This non-natural demand calls on us to take into account the happiness and well-being of people we don’t personally know. We may be called upon to make sacrifices for the sake of these strangers. Many of us resist giving up something we cherish for the sake of some “Other,” even when we understand the logic of doing so. Truth be told, we are much more likely to comply if such a demand is bound up with the power and authority of religion.

Take, for example, Christianity. In the book of Matthew (10:34), Jesus tells his followers: “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.”

The author of the book of Luke (14:26) echoes the passage above. (This is not surprising since Matthew is a source for Luke, along with the book of Mark.) In Luke, Jesus says: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” Jesus tells those who wish to follow him that they must leave their families and make him (God) more important than parents and siblings. Disciples must be ready to take the Cross—meaning that they must be willing to suffer and to sacrifice to do his will. Doing God’s good work, and heeding God’s moral demands must be given highest priority at all times.

Islam also requires attention to the stranger. According to scholar Reza Aslan, author of No god but God, a focus on higher laws was true of Islam from its earliest beginnings. Muhammad, the messenger of God, was a member of the leading tribes of Mecca called the Quraysh. Breaking custom, he rebuked his tribe (his family) because of its unethical practices.

What were these practices? During Muhammad’s childhood, the Ka’ba housed the many gods of Mecca and the many gods of surrounding areas. Members of the Quraysh family controlled access to this site of pilgrimage. During the pilgrimage cycle, people came from near and far to pay homage to their gods. Vendors from the region capitalized on the influx of visitors by bringing merchandise to commercial fairs. A “modest but lucrative trade zone” formed around Mecca. Eventually, the Quraysh realized that they could charge a tax on all goods brought into Mecca. As a result of this tax, they became yet more prosperous and powerful.

The problem, which Muhammad saw clearly, was that this extreme concentration of wealth altered the social and economic balance of the city and destroyed the tribal ethic regulating the interactions between tribes. The rapid rise in revenues collected by a few Meccan families led to rigid social stratification and “swept away [the] tribal ideas” of egalitarianism that previously existed: “No longer was there any concern for the poor and marginalized… The Shayks of Quraysh had become far more interested in maintaining the apparatus of trade than in caring for the dispossessed.”

More interested in wealth and in the affairs of trade than in the lives of their kinsmen, the Quraysh offered no formal protection to the masses. Since neither orphans or widows had “access to any kind of inheritance,” their only means of survival was to “borrow money from the rich at exorbitant interest rates.” This usually led to enormous debt, which “in turn led to crushing poverty, and ultimately, to slavery.” Muhammad, himself an orphan, was all too aware of this possibility. He was spared this fate solely because an uncle, a member of a clan within the tribe of Quraysh, became his guardian.

When Muhammad revealed God’s messages to the Meccans, he “decried the mistreatment and exploitation of the weak and unprotected.” He also demanded help for the underprivileged and the oppressed and argued that “it was the duty of the rich and powerful to take care of them.” God, he said, “had seen the greed and wickedness of the Quraysh, and would tolerate it no longer.”

As Muhammad’s message spread, those who joined his movement not only changed their religious faith to the worship of Allah, they also cut themselves off from their families and their tribes. In essence, they left their homes, the people they loved, the tribe that gave them protection and identity, in order to join a self-created community without standing—Muhammad’s growing group of Companions.

Like Jesus’ followers, the Meccans who adopted Muhammad’s ideas had to choose: remain with their families even though they could no longer abide their loved ones’ religious or moral tenets, or leave their families of origin and give priority to their adopted family and to Allah’s moral demands.

The costs of leaving one’s tribe to adopt Allah’s laws were exceedingly high because the tribe was the basic, and only community unit. Each tribe had a Hakam, a trusted, neutral party who acted as arbiter during disputes. His rulings set precedent and, collected together, became the “foundation of a normative legal tradition, or Sunna, that served as the tribe’s legal code.” Each tribe had its own Sunna. Indeed, one tribe’s Sunna did not necessarily match another tribe’s. Because each tribe operated as something of a stand-alone community, outside of his or her own tribe, an individual had “no legal protection, no rights, and no social identity.”

Today, the standard objection against higher moral laws is that such laws fail to account for the special bonds we have with loved ones. But, in the story of Muhammad, we see the impact of focusing uniquely on one’s family members and considering “non-family” members as existing outside of the circle of care.

Muhammad demanded that his followers loosen, if not abandon, their special bonds to loved ones if these loved ones hampered them from attending to individuals with “no legal protection, no rights, and no social identity.” Jesus underscored that becoming his disciple required putting service to God ahead of family ties and required sacrifice—taking up the Cross.

Who constitutes the “neighbor” is contested, both in Christianity and in Islam, though it is easier for Christianity to make a case for a universal notion of neighbor than it is for Islam, which includes only fellow Muslims under the rubric of neighbor.

Stories tied to Jesus and Muhammad highlight the tension between doing what is right and good for those we know and love, and doing what is right and good for those we don’t know or don’t love. These religions call into question our “natural” drive to care for our simple family-unit and demand that we broaden our perspective to include care for those who are not like ourselves.

Because balancing the two sorts of moral demands that make claims on us can be confusing under the best of circumstances, religions like Christianity and Islam (as well as other religions) remind us of the importance of remaining—in spite of obstacles—attentive to our “neighbors.” They also offer, as a result of centuries of reflection, argumentation, and refinement, guidance for how best to navigate unclear situations and negotiate complex and intertwined dilemmas.

Most of the religions (in their best instantiations) remind us unequivocally of the rights that others have on our time, finances, and skills even although we will never meet them and never know their names. The religions remind us that first priority is to be given to the support and care of the poor and oppressed even if this means we must shirk the needs of close family members. Yes, guilt and disappointment and frustration will surely follow such decisions, but this is the kind of sacrifice Jesus and Muhammad asked of their disciples.

Whether we are disciples or Jesus or Muhammad or not, do our world views ask as much from us? If not, they warrant a second look.

Resource: Reza Aslan. No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam. Updated edition. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2011.

Jon Barstad/Riksarkivet (National Archives of Norway)

Compassion? Do you know exactly what you mean when you use the word “compassion”? Do you mean “compassion” as in Karen Armstrong’s Charter of Compassion, or as in Arthur Schopenhauer’s “compassion is the basis of morality,” or as in the Bible’s “Good Samaritan who had compassion for the wounded traveler?”

“Compassion,” after all, is used in different sorts of conversations and in different contexts. It has a wide range of meanings. It could mean a feeling akin to empathy. Or it could mean an act of kindness. Is Christian compassion equivalent to Buddhist compassion? Or is compassion trans-religious, or philosophical, or not religious at all? And what is the relationship between compassion and ethics?

The 19th Century Jewish philosopher, Hermann Cohen, took up the question of compassion decades ago but his answers remain helpful even today.

Compassion, for Cohen, turns our entire orientation in the world towards one, unavoidable question: “How can suffering be overcome?” Compassion, he said, pulls us up to a summit of sorts; from there, new vistas open up, along with new insights on how to overcome suffering.

Like any good philosopher, Cohen studied the history of the meaning of compassion. In his masterpiece, Religion of Reason: Out of the Sources of Judaism, he offers a brief retelling of this history. Two factors emerge. First, “compassion” is a term long embedded in European thought—Cohen describes what compassion meant to the Ancient Greek Stoics. Second, it is clear that the meaning of “compassion” has shifted over time—in a hundred years, it might well be understood differently than it is today.

Just as we do, the Stoics, Cohen explains, knew that people suffered. They, too, were interested in answering the question: “How can suffering be overcome.” Their answer? They believed that decisions about how best to alleviate suffering should be made on the basis of reason alone because, in their view, reason is the human faculty best suited to making right and good choices. The problem with compassion? Reason may tell us to do one thing while emotions like compassion may tell us to do something else. For the Stoics, when we evaluate our options with respect to suffering, options prompted by compassion must be set aside when they conflict with options offered by reason.

Cohen also discusses the unusual, but internally consistent, view of Baruch (the Latinate version of “Barack”) Spinoza, the seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher. Spinoza rejects compassion which he understood as feeling or “affect.” He is pantheist and thus God is everything that is. Human beings are “only modes” or expressions of God, the one substance. As “modes” or expressions of God, each of us is just like every Other. No single person has individual worth. What we have, as individuals, is differing knowledge of God, the One. Good knowledge is knowledge that we are all expressions of the One. Evil knowledge denies this. Spinoza holds that “compassion is of the same breed as envy”—a surprising equivalence but one that is fully aligned with his pantheistic worldview because, according to him, compassion and envy either lead us to focus on the Other, or they lead us from the Other back to the Self. Either way, we have abandoned the “good” knowledge that we are all expressions of the One for an “evil,” differentiating knowledge of the Other or of the Self. (If you, too, are a pantheist, how do you get around Spinoza’s unsatisfying view on suffering?)

Cohen disagrees with the Stoics and with Spinoza.

In his opinion, most human beings are incapable of succeeding at a Stoic-like approach. We are, quite simply, constitutionally unable to be indifferent to our own suffering. We find it impossible to set aside pain—whether emotional or physical—and pay attention only to reason.

Cohen also argues against allowing, or training ourselves to be indifferent to other people’s suffering. For him, this is a moral issue and a religious one. Compassion must be more than an “inert” response like that of the Stoics. It is not enough simply to note that others suffer or that we suffer. An “inert” reaction is tantamount to laissez-faire ethics because, most likely, it will fail to motivate us to make efforts (and sometimes sacrifice) to alleviate or end suffering. Compassion, on Cohen’s telling, is no “fruitless sentimentality”—it is a fruitful reaction if it drives us to act.

As for Spinoza’s approach to compassion, Cohen worries that the indifference to the unique worth of each human that this pantheist recommended will result in narrow-mindedness. Such indifference, Cohen believes, makes us passive with respect to suffering and reduces compassion to a “reflex action”—we act, yes, but our actions are informed by habit or by our community’s customs, not by our appreciation of the individual before us.

Suffering is pain, Cohen writes. Who wouldn’t agree? But he gets more interesting. When we attempt to be indifferent to other people’s suffering as the Stoics and Spinoza suggest (on Cohen’s reading), we rob ourselves of the possibility that the Other before us might change from a mere “S/he” (“a representative carrier of humanity,” a human like other humans in the world falling under the purview of ethics and of laws of the state) to a “Thou” (“a classification within the notion of humanity,” an individual person distinct from all other persons). The moment we shift, for Cohen, from encountering the Other as a “S/he,” to encountering them as a “Thou,” is the moment when the suffering of the Other pulls us out of the generalized “He/She” realm of concepts and ethics into the particular “Thou” realm of compassion and religion.

Important to Cohen as well: through the compassion to which suffering gives rise, we discover the Thou in the Other, and when we do so, we wonder whether “S/he” is like me, whether S/he” can suffer like me. The discovery of the Thou thus leads to an ethical realization. We hope that when the “I” reappears (after the moment of discovery passes) it will reappear “liberated from the shadow of selfishness.”

Can compassion, Cohen asks, illuminate ethics and help it answer its own questions about how suffering is to be overcome?

Ethics, according to Cohen, relies on concepts like “the good” and “the right” and “duties.” To this conceptual work, compassion has nothing to offer except when ethics takes a pragmatic tack. In this case, compassion becomes “a useful illusion,” because it serves as a lens through which we can try to understand the suffering of others. Compassion, as “a useful illusion,” helps us share the suffering of others. By virtue of this sharing, we may help ethics find answers to the question of how suffering can be overcome.

To return to this post’s initial question: does the oft-used word, compassion, signify more than a feeling-ful or action-ful response to suffering? Cohen offers an insightful and nuanced understanding. Using the language of poets rather than philosophers, he writes that compassion knows suffering as a dazzling light that “suddenly makes [you] see the dark spots in the sun of life.”

When struggling to define compassion, remember Cohen’s lovely riff on this word. Suffering brings you to the limit of the ordinary realm of “S/he.” It is at this borderline that compassion and religion arises. Compassion for suffering may then propel you into the “higher pinnacle” of “Thou.” From this place, this summit, you can see more clearly what actions on your part and your community’s could ease the pain. And, upon returning this place, you are spurred to make it so.

Ever wonder what an academic paper on theology looks like? Or wonder what this Naked Theologian does with her “spare” time when she’s not writing blog posts? Here’s a short paper that I presented in November 2012 to the Liberal Theologies Group of the American Academy of Religion (AAR), a yearly conference hosting more than 10,000 religion scholars. Should you choose to accept the mission of reading my paper, don’t worry about arcane technical language; there’s almost none (in order to be accessible to an AAR audience of specialists from a variety of disciplines). Also, the paper was intended for oral delivery and so avoids possible tongue-twisters. Enjoy!

Lived Religion and the ‘Agent-God’: Making a Case for the Personalist Theological Method of Gordon Kaufman

Gordon Kaufman’s constructive theology evolved significantly over the course of his decades-long career. However, since 1993, the year that he published In Face of Mystery, much of the scholarly engagement with his work has focused on this text and those that followed. This last phase of Kaufman’s theology with its impersonal concept of God as serendipitous-creativity has much to recommend it. However, I want to argue for renewed attention to the second, or personalist, phase of his theology.

In my view, there are three phases to Kaufman’s theology: first, Kaufman’s historicist phase; next, his personalist phase—so-called because he assumes that God-concepts will have person-like characteristics, and finally, his naturalist phase.

My case for taking a new look at the personalist phase of Kaufman’s theology and its associated theological method is based on a two-pronged argument:

First, during his personalist phase, Kaufman designed his theological method to facilitate the construction of God-concepts ranging from a sparse God to an Agent-God. This method is of special interest to theists who seek to construct, or more likely re-construct, a concept of God which is existentially meaningful, comforting in times of suffering, and which serves as an ultimate reference point. For the theists he has in mind, Kaufman writes, the word “God” “stands for” or “names” the “ultimate point of reference or orientation for all life, action, devotion, and reflection” (ETM, 17).

Second, the personalist phase of Kaufman’s theological method is well suited to the hybrid theologies that have become a fixture of the American religious landscape. His method, during this phase, is open to diverse religious and theological perspectives and to perspectives from science and secular humanism. But, for theists who incorporate a variety of religious symbols, rituals and texts from multiple traditions or from non-traditional sources to create individualistic theologies, Kaufman’s personalist phase provides checks to reduce the risk of producing Feuerbachian—or human-writ-large—God-constructs. And his method includes criteriato help theists identify the most humanizing symbols, rituals, and texts from among the plethora of possible options.

I now want to elaborate my first point—namely, that the personalist phase of Kaufman’s method, by offering a procedure for constructing an Agent-God, is helpful to theists who seek to construct, or more likely re-construct, a concept of God which is existentially meaningful, comforting in times of suffering, and an ultimate reference point, moral and otherwise.

In this phase of his work, Kaufman holds that the only God available to human beings is the concept of God that we imaginatively construct. He accepts Kant’s claim that it is impossible to have knowledge of God since God is not a “thing” like other “things.” Though God may exist, knowledge of God is beyond the capacity of our limited intellects. For this reason, Kaufman writes, “theology is (and always has been) essentially an activity of imaginative construction.”[1] Though imaginatively constructed, our concepts of God can play a central role in our lives. “Believing in God,” Kaufman argues, ”means practically to order all of life and experience in personalistic, purposive, moral terms, and to construe the world and man accordingly” (GP, 107, italics mine). For Kaufman, as for Kant, theology is above all a practical discipline (GP, 101).

During the personalist phase of his theology, Kaufman anticipates that individuals constructing a concept of “God” are likely to incorporate terms, concepts, and metaphors drawn from their relationships, every day experiences, and familiar images (TI, 155). Indeed Kaufman recommends that “God” include anthropomorphic characteristics though he does not require them. However, Kaufman argues, unless we conceive of God as person-like, God can’t be existentially meaningful to us since “the human person is the only reality we know” for which our “concerns are of significance” (ETM, 65). Thus, Kaufman writes, “it is not surprising that metaphors such as ‘merciful father’ or ‘powerful savior’ were from very early on prominent in talk about God and that they remain among those which are more existentially meaningful to many” (ETM, 65). Indeed, these metaphors are also comforting to many in times of suffering. God as “merciful father” or “powerful savior” is, of course, an Agent-God.

The personalist phase of Kaufman’s method includes three mutually adjusting steps or moments as he calls them to signal that he does not intend them to be undertaken in any particular order and that they can be used recursively.

In broad strokes, Kaufman’s three moments for “methodologically sound theological work” are as follows (1995):

1. Construction of the concept, “world”

This moment entails a description of “reality” (for example, a phenomenological or scientific description).

2. Construction of the concept, “God”

The God-concept is required to include a “humanizing motif” for devotion, work, and practical orientation, as well as a relativizing motif to call into question our values, norms, and goals. I will have more to say about the humanizing and relativizing motifs when I discuss the second prong of my paper’s argument.

3. Adjustment of the concept, “world,” based on the relativizing and humanizing components of the concept, “God”

The concept of “world” is now to be understood as being “under God.” As a result, “world” may need to be adjusted to reflect the relativizing and humanizing components of the concept, “God.”

To recap the first prong of my argument, the personalist phase of Kaufman’s method is well suited to help theists who want to construct a person-like God who is existentially meaningful, comforting in times of suffering, and an ultimate point of orientation for their day-to-day decision-making.

Now, for my second reason for recommending renewed engagement with Kaufman’s middle, personalist phase—namely, that this phase of his method is well-suited to the hybrid, “lived” theological approach that has become a central feature of the American religious landscape.

Charles Taylor, in his 2002 Varieties of Religion Today, describes what he considers a new, contemporary age of “widespread ‘expressive’ individualism” (80). In the religious sphere, according to Taylor, expressive individualism means that (and these are Taylor’s words) “More and more people [are adopting] what would earlier have been seen as untenable positions, for example, they consider themselves Catholic while not accepting many crucial dogmas, or they combine Christianity with Buddhism, or they pray while not being certain they believe” (107). Though he traces this kind of expressiveness back to Europe’s Romantic period, what is new, he argues, is how it “seems to have become a mass phenomenon” (80).

More recently, Heidi Campbell, in her March 2012 Journal of the American Academy of Religion article, confirms Taylor’s assessment. Campbell reports that, in their autonomy, theists practice what she calls “lived religion.” By this, she means that theists pick a variety of religious symbols and narratives out of traditional structures and dogmas and then recombine them into new theologies. This mix of symbols and narratives often originate from multiple traditions including traditions previously considered non-religious. Like Taylor, Campbell finds that “pic-n-mix” (her expression) religiosity has become mainstream. She writes: “The process of mixing multiple sources of forms of spiritual self-expression…once done by individuals in private or on the fringes [is growing] more accessible and visible to the wider culture” (Campbell, 79).

Why is Kaufman’s personalist-phase method especially helpful for those who practice “pic-n-mix,” lived religion? Because, during this phase, his method is intentionally open to diverse religious and theological perspectives as well as to perspectives from science and secular humanism. Indeed, Kaufman assumes that encounters with other worldviews are important. These encounters, he believes, are bound to lead to discriminating and informed judgments about what is humanly significant. In his words:

The coming new age of a thoroughly interconnected and interdependent worldwide humanity must build upon the best insights and disciplines of all our long and varied human experience, as conserved for us in the many religious and cultural traditions alive and meaningful today. We must be open to all, in conversation with all (GMD, 40).

No doubt, picking and choosing from various models and images can lead to God-constructs that are formulated in terms of human needs and desires. As I mentioned earlier, Kaufman finds nothing strange about this. For God to be “God to us” and orient our lives, then our concept of God must share at least some of our human attributes and be capable of understanding our concerns in a significant way whether these are physical, moral, social, or cultural (ETM, 64).

While Kaufman’s personalist phase is open to anthropomorphic concepts of God, it is designed to combat anthropocentrism in two significant ways. Kaufman insists that any concept/image of God include what he calls 1) a humanizing motif and 2) a relativizing motif.

The humanizing motif of the God-construct helps transform us into” genuinely humane beings” and enables us to fulfill “our human potential” (TI, 32, 41). It is the humanizing motif that tends to introduce anthropomorphism into a concept of God. Powerful anthropomorphic images enable the God-construct to personify our highest and most important “ideals and values” (TI, 32, 41). Indeed, these images, Kaufman writes, can emphasize “the goodness of creation as a whole and specifically of human existence,…the importance of human communal existence and [of] just social institutions, a high valuation of morally responsible selfhood and such virtues as mercy, forgiveness, love, faithfulness, and the like…” (GDM, 94). In addition, the humanizing motif enables theists with a pic-n-mix religiosity to adjudicate between symbols, ideals, and artifacts and decide which to incorporate (or remove) from their hybrid God-constructs.

In contrast, the relativizing motif of the God-construct judges all of our achievements, according to “a very demanding norm,” to reign in our “tendencies toward anthropocentrism, hubris, and self-aggrandizement, our tendencies to make ourselves into gods instead of accepting our proper place within the creaturely order” (TI, 154-156). The relativizing motif “emphasizes God’s radical otherness, God’s mystery, God’s utter inaccessibility” (TI, 41). By virtue of its radical otherness, the God-construct provides us with “a center of orientation” outside of ourselves. As an ultimate reference point, the concept of God calls into question all of our projects, values, and goals. And because it calls into question everything finite, the relativizing motif of the God-construct even calls into question “every formulation or expression” of the concept of God itself (TI, 35, 87).

The humanizing and relativizing motifs are connected. If a God-concept is properly constructed, the two motifs operate as a powerful dialectic internal to its structure. The tension between them, Kaufman asserts, gives “the symbol much of its power and effectiveness as a focus for devotion and orientation in human life” (TI, 41). As long as “its highly dialectical character” is maintained and “its demand for continuous self-criticism” is honored, the God-construct cannot be “converted into an idol sustaining and supporting our own projects, but is apprehended as truly God,” forcing the self “into a posture of humbleness in its claims” (TI, 87).

I want to underscore the point that, during his personalist phase, Kaufman held that an anthropomorphic concept of God is not necessarily anthropo-centric. In fact, it is designed to fight against anthropocentrism.

It is true that he eventually decided that human beings are unable to resist 1) giving God-constructs ontological status and 2) reifying the anthropomorphic attributes of God-constructs. The only reliable way to deflate these impulses, he decided, was to make an impersonal God the proper object of devotion. Thus did Kaufman abandon his personalist phase. These considerations led him to the naturalist phase of his theology.

Yet, even in his naturalist phase, Kaufman recognized what I have argued in this paper—namely, that many theists continue to “opt for the more traditional agent-God” (IFM, 273). Despite the shortcomings that he came to associate with the Agent-God, Kaufman granted that this concept, “based on the model of the self-conscious and dynamic human agent, has been (and still is in many quarters) of great effectiveness in the ordering and orienting of human life” (IFM, 272). A world picture with an Agent-God at its core, he wrote in In Face of Mystery, continues “to function in important ways, not only among the traditionally pious but also in shaping ideals and goals in society at large” (IFM, 273).

Kaufman may not have fully anticipated contemporary “lived” religion or the degree to which theists today practice pic-n-mix religiosity, but the personalist phase of his theological method supports and even encourages exchanges between different religious, theological, and secular worldviews. This phase offers the possibility of constructing a wide range of God-concepts while also designed to defeat Feuerbachian God-concepts. The humanizing motif inspires theists to become more humane and to fulfill their highest potential; the relativizing motif calls the God-concept into question as well all of our projects, values, and norms.

Given these strengths, the personalist phase of Kaufman’s theological method deserves another look.

Endnote:

[1] Kaufman, “Theology as Imaginative Construction,” The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. I., No. 1, March 1982, p. 73.

References:

Campbell, Heidi. “Understanding the Relationship between Religion Online and Offline in a Networked Society.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 80:1 (2012): 84-93.

When it comes to religion, some of us want to have it both ways: when deeply religious people do bad things, we are quick to say that their religious beliefs are to blame, but when deeply religious people do good things, we take little to no interest in their religious beliefs, as if those beliefs were irrelevant.

In her post, the politically-progressive Bass slams Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s brand of evangelical religion. For her, the most disturbing part of his conservative Christianity is his no-wiggle-room obedience to God’s commands. Bass points out that, for evangelicals like Walker, “Once you know God’s direction, no change is allowed. Doubt opens the door to failure. Obeying Christ’s plan is the only option. In this theological universe, hard-headedness is a virtue, compromise is the work of the Devil, and anything that works to accomplish God’s plan is considered ethically justifiable.”

This, she notes, is the same sort of evangelical religion that shaped George W. Bush–and led to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. She is of the opinion that President Bush’s obedience to God’s commands was the cause of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In spite of the ugh-producing situation of turning to someone like Walker or Bush to shed light on our own thinking, progressives, please take a deep breath (you may even need to swallow hard) and then ask yourselves this question: is obedience really the problem here, or is the real problem the commands Walker or Bush claims to obey? Because if Walker were obeying a different set of commands—say, God’s command that Wisconsin increase its minimum wage, would Bass (or you) object? Or if Walker claimed to be obeying God’s command to work tirelessly on behalf of legislation to decrease the inequity between the richest and the poorest, would Bass (or you) object?

Most of us can name good people who have done good (defined here as progressive) things. Yet, tsk tsk tsk, we rarely acknowledge their religious motives for doing that good. Do we imagine that they were simply good people who would have done good things regardless of their religious beliefs? Or is it simply that, because they did good things, their religious beliefs raise no red flags and so warrant no scrutiny?

But by overlooking the religious beliefs that motivate our heroes, are we ignoring some fundamental part of who they are?

Corrie ten Boom, raised in the Dutch Reform tradition, once said, “Don’t bother to give God instructions; just report for duty.” For her, reporting for duty meant starting girls and boys’ clubs in her native Holland and eventually risking her life to hide Jewish refugees during WW II. The risks were real; she was arrested but managed to survive Ravensbruck concentration camp.

And did you know that Florence Nightingale was a Christian universalist who believed that God wanted her to be a nurse? In her journal, she wrote: “God called me in the morning and asked me would I do good for him alone without reputation.”

Other religious do-gooders include Dorothy Day, John Newman, William Wilberforce, and Desmond Tutu.

Surely these report-to-God-for-duty folks would be troubled to learn that their religious commitment to serving others is being downplayed or ignored. Surely they would be dismayed to discover that the force of their relationship with God is being excised from their biographies.

Though we may see ourselves as too autonomous or too agnostic to follow commands from God, we can learn something from the doggedness and zeal of those who report to God for duty. Imagine for a moment that you believed, with as much conviction as a Scott Walker or a George W. Bush or a Corrie ten Boom or a Florence Nightingale that God commanded you to dedicate yourself to raising the average standard of living in the United States. What if you could proclaim: “Once I know God’s direction, no change is allowed. Doubt opens the door to failure. Obeying God’s plan is the only option.”

With a no-doubt, no-compromise, no-holds-barred, God-on-your-side-for-sure attitude, who knows what you might accomplish! Would any effort seem too big, any policy-change impossible?

Maybe. Maybe not. Still, the point remains that disapprovers of the Walker and Bush brand of conservative religion can’t have it both ways when it comes to linking religious belief with good or bad actions. Either religious conviction matters or it doesn’t.

If religion influences those with whom we disagree, then we have to allow that religion also influences those with whom we do agree. To which Corrie ten Boom, Florence Nightingale, Dorothy Day, John Newman, William Wilberforce, Desmond Tutu, and many others would say amen.

When women have gotten the right to vote or to divorce or to inherit property or to have legal protection from rape, it’s because men have agreed to change the law of the land. A few forward-thinking women demanded those rights—some nicely, some not so nicely. Allied to their cause was some of the menfolk, the forward-thinking men who were as mad as hell about women’s lack of rights and about how other men treated women. Especially since the Enlightenment, these men, sometimes at great costs to themselves, have toiled to persuade other men to get mad too.

Forward-thinking men had to do the convincing since men who don’t already think highly of women aren’t likely to pay attention to what women have to say. They only listen to other men.

In the United States, men-to-men persuading rippled through the ranks of maledom until eventually enough men joined together to bend the arc of history.

For example, would American women have gotten the vote as early as 1920 if President Woodrow Wilson hadn’t publicly declared his support for the 19th amendment? The Senate refused to vote on the amendment, so women went into overdrive to convince the all-male voters to elect pro-suffrage Representatives and Senators. The men came through, and in 1919, the all-male House of Representatives and the all-male Senate ratified the amendment.

When it comes to religious teachings, however, righteous anger among men over the fate of womankind is harder to identify. In Afghanistan, men granted women the vote in 1963. No matter. In 2009, the government of President Hamid Karzai passed the so-called marriage-rape law. This law gives Afghan husbands the right to force their wives to have sex with them. It also permits them to starve their wives if they refuse to have sex at least four times a week. President Karzai pushed this law as a nod to the country’s Shiite minority and as a nod to hardline Shia clerics whose votes he needed to be re-elected.

When, oh when, will hardline Shia clerics get mad about the abuse of their mothers and of their sisters and of their daughters? When will they speak out against it? Because what’s clear is that until they speak out, the abuse will continue.

And really, what man could fail to get angry upon seeing the August 9,2010, Time Magazine’s cover with its photograph of Aisha, an eighteen-year old Afghani woman whose nose was sliced off by her Taliban husband?

Photograph by Jodi Bieber

In case you’ve been absent from the news cycle recently, here’s Aisha’s story in brief. When she was twelve, her father decided to give her, along with her four-year old sister, to the man destined to become their husband. This gift was intended to settle the blood feud started by Aisha’s uncle when he killed one of the future husband’s relatives.

According to the August 6, 2010, edition of the International Herald Tribune, Aisha and her sister were left in the care of their would-be husband’s family during the long periods when he went into hiding. During his absences, Aisha and her sister were forced to live with the livestock and treated like slaves. They were also beaten as punishment for their uncle’s crime. When Aisha reached puberty, she was married to the Taliban fighter. And when she was old enough to take care of herself, she ran away.

“Shamed” by her flight, her husband “lost his nose”—or so goes the Pashtun saying. He tracked her down and dragged her back to his home province. There, “on a lonely mountainside [he] cut off her nose and both ears.” And there, he abandoned her. How she made her way off the mountainside she still can’t remember. Aisha, although angry about what happened to her, refuses to reveal her family name to protect her father from scrutiny and approbation.

American aid workers took Aisha to one of only nineteen women’s shelters (all run by private charities) in Afghanistan. Although few in numbers, these shelters are already under threat. After a TV station in Kabul complained that they were merely fronts for prostitution, President Karzai convened a commission to investigate these complaints. If the charges stick, then the shelters will be shut down, leaving abused women with no place to go. The man chosen by President Karzai to head this commission is a conservative mullah. Although no official report has yet been released, the mullah has already spoken out in favor of the prostitution claim. The mullah’s name is Nematullah Shahrani. It has been shared with the press and so he, unlike Aisha’s father, is open to scrutiny and approbation. And approbation he deserves. As does President Karzai.

Now is a good time for a disclaimer. This post is not a “cynical ploy” to “justify [the] occupation” of Afghanistan by American troops by “exploiting gender politics,”—a complaint launched at Time Magazine’s cover story of Aisha. However, it is a ploy to get men who aren’t already angry—well, angry. Why? Because the more men get angry at the status quo the more likely they’ll attain the collective strength of will required to stop other men from abusing women.

Whether the violence done to Afghani women is justified based on religion, or culture, or both, makes little difference. Let’s face it, attempts to tease apart religion from culture in these situations usually lead to stalemates. But the fact remains that Aisha has no nose. Her now ten-year old sister is still a slave in her husband’s household. The shelter that rescued her may be shut down. Married women raped by their husbands have no legal recourse. Intra-family honor killings continue. The stoning of women convicted of adultery continues.

One day, a few forward-thinking Afghani mullahs will finally get angry about the treatment of women—for example, they will get angry about the stoning of purported adulteresses. Their anger will compel them to look for resources within the Islamic tradition to develop the kinds of authoritative, legal opinions that Afghani men take seriously. This is the key. Islamic cleric must speak out against violence. To speak with authority, they must find support in Islamic sources. And if they seek support in Islamic sources, they will find it.

Indeed, we need look no further than Iran—yes, Iran of all places—for how this might work. Let’s look at the case of stoning. Until the ratification of the Islamic Penal Code in 1983, stoning did not exist in Iran. However, stoning became a legal punishment when the republic of Iran came under the rule of Muslim clerics. Since many Muslim jurists shared the opinion that stoning could be considered Islamic, this sentence was included in the set of legal options ratified by the government.

Sharia Law is based on three authoritative texts: the Qu’ran, the sayings attributed to Mohammed (the hadith), and Mohammed’s biography. Stoning does not appear in any Shiite hadith, but it does appears in the Sunni hadith collected by Sahih Bukhari; according to this Sunni hadith, Mohammed ordered stoning more than 34 times as punishment. However, the Qu’ran makes no mention of this form of punishment.

Women and men all over the world protested when Iran made stoning legal. Faced with intense and persistent international criticism, the government of Iran, unlike that of President Karzai, reconsidered its stance on stoning. Iran also faced intense domestic criticism (Afghanistan does not). Thanks to both external and internal pressure, Iran eventually placed a moratorium on stoning. A few judges ignored the moratorium and handed down stoning sentences during 2006-8. But as of June 2009, Iran’s parliament has undertaken a review of the Islamic penal code, intent on eliminating stoning as a legal form of punishment.

Like Afghanistan, Iran is a nation where Muslim clerics have a great deal of influence on daily life. Unlike Afghanistan, Iran looked for resources within Islam to justify removing stoning from the Islamic penal code. Because it looked for those resources, it found them.

Because Iran is majority Shiite, it could disregard the Sunni hadith. A country like Indonesia did not have that luxury—it is predominantly Sunni. No matter. Indonesia’s majority-male legislators made stoning illegal (except for Aceh province). Some of its clerics looked for Islamic resources to ban stoning and found them. By extension, if its clerics decide to look for Islamic resources to ban all violence against women, they will find them.

Afghanistan’s Muslim clerics could follow suit. The war on Afghani women will not end until mullahs change their minds about violence against women. The war on women will not end until Afghani men get angry and demand the mullahs change. The war on women will not end until more men around the world get angry and demand that Afghani men and mullahs change.

And why focus all of the attention on Afghanistan. Women all over the world continue to be subject to violence. So men of the world, won’t you please get mad as hell!

NOTE: The Naked Theologian will be on hiatus for the month of August and will return after the Labor Day holiday.

A Scenario:

You stop by the convenience store to pick up a gallon of milk. On your way out, you hand the cashier a $10 bill. After she gives you your change, you realize she confused your $10 for a $20. You now have more money than when you walked into the store. (Granted, this scenario is a stretch.) The cashier has started to ring up the next customer and you have to decide whether to give the money back.

A Question:

Why would you do the right thing? (Ethicists call this “the metaethical question”—and now you can too).

From the list below, choose all the reasons you’d do the right thing.

1. fear of God’s punishment
2. you were in a good mood
3. it was the most expedient thing to do
4. habit
5. c’mon, there was only $10 on the line!
6. because God rewards the virtuous
7. your better instincts took over
8. you knew you’d feel good about yourself for doing the right thing
9. hmmmmm…don’t know
10. it was the best decision given the circumstances
11. it was the right thing to do, period
12. the cashier was cute and you’re between partners
13. whim; you never really know what you’re going to do ahead of time
14. you knew others would think you rock when you’d tell them what you did
15. your happiness comes first—this choice made you happy
16. the happiness of others comes first—this choice made the cashier happy
17. you tried to imagine what kind of world you’d like to live in, and then decided
18. you wanted to set a good example for your kids
19. God calls, 24/7 for your response to the demand that you bring justice and
loving-kindness into the world
20. you expected the cashier would thank you profusely; you like being thanked
21. you tossed a coin; it landed in her favor
22. the cashier looked like she needed the bucks more than you did
23. you’re on a personal quest for moral perfection
24. her brother is 6’5”, 250 lbs.—he hurts people who take advantage of his sis
25. you were afraid you’d get caught and the police would get called in
26. you were afraid you’d get caught and be publicly humiliated
27. _____________________________________ (other)

More Questions:

From the list, select the 3 best reasons for doing the right thing in any moral situation?

Are the 3 best reasons different from the ones you chose with regard to the cashier?

If the 3 best reasons don’t always motivate you, why not?

Can you boil down the 3 best reasons to a single reason? This is your maxim—in other words, this is the overriding moral rule you would prefer to use when trying to decide what to do.

There is the world as-it-is, and then there is the world that-could-be.

In Iran, this is the world as-it-is: the disputed legitimacy of the recent re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad propelled enraged supporters of his opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, into the sweltering streets of Teheran. Ahmadinejad (with the blessing of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) pushed back with increasing brutality, deploying riot police and the much-feared, violence-prone, Basij paramilitary forces against unarmed citizens.

But what if, in a world that-could-be, Ahmadinejad chose, instead, an ethics of yielding? Yes, an ethics of yielding.

One must be careful how one draws lessons from the past (thanks to their variety and number, historical events lend themselves too easily to an unscrupulous defense of almost any ideologically-driven claim). But we can, for the sake of discussing a world that-could-be, draw on the work of Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), a French essayist who lived and wrote during a time of bitter wars of religion between Protestants and Catholics, and a time of violent political conflict between rebellious nobles and the crown.

A heterodox Catholic, Montaigne believed that God leaves us free to work out our lives on human terms. And in the process of working out his own life on human terms, Montaigne developed a new ethics of accommodation based on shared trust and on shared humanity. Opposed to the zealotry of the warring parties, Montaigne pleaded for an attitude of yielding both on the part of the victor and of the vanquished. He even argued that his ethics of passivity was the best way to preserve each side’s desire for respect: “You can swallow your pride and have it too, provided you learn how to be a good loser” (this quote comes from David Quint‘s Montaigne and the Quality of Mercy).

To return to the topic at hand–in a world that-could-be, if Ahmadinejad followed Montaigne’s recommendations, what effect, practically-speaking, would this have on Iran? Having defeated the protestors with a massive and intractable show of force, Ahmadinejad could now preserve both his self-respect and that of the protestors by adopting a stance of clemency. Toward those he formerly pursued, he could adopt a stance of flexibility, of softness. And by choosing to identify with those he crushed and reduced to weakness, he would demonstrate courage. Yes, courage–because he would allow his opponents to remain a threat to him and his government. In the Iran that-is, Ahmadinejad has elevated himself to God-like status. In the Iran that-could-be, Ahmadinejad would reclaim his humanity.

Montaigne’s ethics of yielding is not reserved for the victor. The vanquished must also yield. In the Iran that-could-be, the protestors would choose not to resist. Instead, they would demonstrate the highest self-respect by acknowledging the power of Ahmadinejad, and by acknowledging the humanity and weakness they share with him. They would disarm themselves, and trust in their foe. A recent Newsweek image captured the difficult kind of clemency Montaigne had in mind; it showed a small group of protestors using their own bodies to shield a disarmed riot cop from the rage of their fellow protestors. They had the courage to be merciful to their captured enemy even though they knew that he would probably try to harm them again on another day.

But even Montaigne, as much a skeptic in his time as most of us are today, dismissed the efficacy of preaching Christian humility. He resorted, instead, to the ploy of promising the merciful victor an enhanced reputation. After all, he pointed out, mercy aggrandizes the merciful one and the vanquished testify to the greatness of the one who has spared them.

So, President Ahmadinejad, if you’re reading this post, will you show mercy, and yield to your countrymen and women’s longing for greater freedom and opportunity? Or will you maintain the course of the Iran-as-it-has-been and rely on fear and oppression to silence your opponents? You have, after all, been handpicked by Ayatollah Khamenei to implement his dream of creating an Islamic caliphate.

But let’s try one last argument: President Ahmadinejad, you miscalculated when you resorted to fraud to over-represent the election that you most likely won anyway. Thanks to your miscalculation, you unleashed the greatest internal threat to Iran’s government since the Shah was toppled and you discovered the depth of your countrymen and women’s yearning for change. Yield, Mr. Ahmadinejad, or you too might find yourself toppled. If toppled you are, may your people yield and have mercy on you.

HNFFT: Every day, we face situations where we have power-over others, or others have power-over us. What could intentional weakness look like for you in those situations? How could you practice an ethics of yielding?

References: Christopher Dickey, “The Supreme Leader,” 40-45, and Fareed Zakaria, “Theocracy and its Discontents,” 30-39, both in Newsweek, 29 June 2009; David Quaint, Montaigne and the Quality of Mercy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).

Most Americans agree that yes, everybody goes to heaven after they die. Not buying it? The part about most Americans agreeing that everybody goes to heaven? Here’s the empirical evidence. A few months ago, a study conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (mentioned by Charles Blow in a New York Times editorial) showed that 70 percent of Americans believe religions other than theirs could lead to eternal life.

So it’s true, 70% of Americans agree–everybody goes to heaven.

Still not buying the poll data? Evangelicals didn’t buy it, because they argued that the respondents had obviously not understood the question. After all, Jesus clearly states in the gospel of John, “I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” In other words, there’s a segregationist sign posted over the only gate into heaven. It says: Christians only. To believe otherwise is a heresy called universalism.

So Pew decided to ask the question again. The results, released in December 2008, confirmed their initial findings. Sixty-five percent said that yes, other religions could lead to eternal life. Just to make sure no one was confused, Pew also asked its respondents to specify which religion(s) could lead to eternal life. The sixty-five percent yes-sayers threw open heaven’s gate to pretty much every religion. Fifty percent even said atheists would pass muster, and people with no religious faith, too. How’s that for generous? So tear down that sign, Mr. Evangelical.

Okay, so the majority of 21st century Americans agree that almost everyone goes heaven after they die.

But if God doesn’t hold us accountable in the afterlife, is it okay to set aside meaningful discussions about moral requirements in this life?

That’s not a rhetorical question, since polls show that religious Americans, whether affiliated with a specific faith tradition or not, whether liberal or conservative, are shearing moral requirements from their theologies (see Post #23 for more on this topic).

The mystic and universalist, Julian of Norwich, offers an intriguing answer to balancing a belief in an all-loving God with the impulse to make people accountable in the afterlife for the harm they’ve caused in this life. Julian, a woman who sought God actively, was rewarded in 1373, when she was a little over thirty years old, by several mystical experiences that she called showings.

Try as she might to find the Church’s ‘fatherly,’ angry, and punishing God, she found only a God who “is the goodness that cannot be angry, for he is nothing but goodness.” The fact that any of us exists, Julian reasoned, is proof that God isn’t an a punishing God. Since everyone commits sins of commission or omission, if God could become angry, we’d all be gonners. According to Julian, human beings, not God, are the ones who judge whether a deed is well done or is evil. As far as God is concerned, even our “lowest deed is done as well as the best”. And since God is nothing but goodness, Julian concluded that we’re all heaven-bound.

How does she balance a loving God with moral requirements? Julian handles this difficult theological quandary by finding a sneaky way to introduce a system of reward. Based on her showings, she identifies a sliding scale of heavenly bliss. The first and lowest degree of bliss in heaven is God’s gratitude for our service, a gratitude that is “so exalted and so glorious that it would seem to fill the soul.” The second degree of bliss in heaven indulges our pride because God makes a public announcement to all the souls in heaven, praising our good deeds. The third degree of bliss is a pleasure that remains forever “as new and delightful” as it did when we first felt it.

To assign the appropriate degree of bliss, God uses a formula mostly based on time and length of service. The formula favors those who “willingly and freely offered their youth”, as well as those who, even for one day, served “with the wish to serve forever.”

According to Julian then, everybody goes to heaven, everybody gets bliss, but depending on our deeds, we are eligible for one of three degrees of bliss. Her God is perched on the narrow edge of that judge’s bench in the sky but hasn’t been shoved off altogether. This all-about-love-God, to whom Julian prayed, sits in minimal judgment of us.

Like her, many religious Americans are quite sure that any God worthy of the name loves us and is too good to condemn us. The mercy-justice issue may continue to trouble us in spite of a creative solution like Julian’s. Is a three-bliss kind of God really the kind of God we want?

Because if we all end up blissed-out in heaven, is God just?

If God grants first-degree (or second or third-degree) bliss to the daughter who routinely calms her work-rage by pummeling her frail, elderly father, is that God just? Is that God fair?

If God grants bliss to the single mother who turns a blind eye while her boyfriend sexually assaults her ten-year old daughter, is that God just? Is that God fair?

But why dwell on this issue at all? Must we insist that God be fair when it comes to putting out the welcome mat at heaven’s door? No. We need not insist that God be fair.

Maybe Julian’s right and we get assigned one of three degrees of bliss. Right or not, we can agree with her conviction that “the more the loving soul sees…generosity in God, the gladder” we will be to serve God all of our days. Simply put: belief in a loving God leads us to be more loving ourselves. And if belief in a loving God leads us to be more loving ourselves–what’s not to love about that?

In a recent New York Times editorial, Ross Douthat, describes religious trends in 21st century America as neither shifting towards the extreme of unbelief or the extreme of fundamentalism. Instead, religious trends are shifting toward a “generalized ‘religiousness’ detached from the claims of any specific faith tradition.” While growing numbers of Americans are abandoning organized religion (Douthat bases this claim on recent polling data), we are, by and large, not opting for atheism.

Pause here, please. Douthat himself pauses on the part about “moral requirements shorn away.” It should give us pause too.

Yes, build-your-own-theology-types are shearing moral requirements from their generalized religiousness. But they are not alone. Americans affiliated with specific faith traditions, whether liberal or conservative, seem to be following the same trend. Douthat complains that religious people of all stripes are showing a distinct preference for a God “who’s too busy validating their particular version of the American Dream to raise a peep about, say, how much money they’re making or how many times they’ve been married.”

Hmmm. Not sure what Douthat means here because large incomes and numerous divorces aren’t necessarily moral no-nos. Most likely he’s wagging his finger at Americans whose God doesn’t raise a peep at HOW they make their money or HOW they spend it (see Post #22 “How good are we without God?”). He’s probably wagging his finger at Americans whose God doesn’t raise a peep even when children are involved in a divorce.

Christians, Douthat says (and here, his meaning is quite clear), are drawn to “a Jesus who’s a thoroughly modern sort of messiah—sexy, worldly, and Goddess-worshipping, with a wife and kids, a house in the Galilean suburbs, and no delusions about his own divinity.”

Hyperbolic language and claims aside, does Douthat have a point?

Okay, so polls show that generalized-religiousness Americans are shearing moral requirements from religious ones. But why are we doing so?

One answer: we’re done with religions or Gods that ask us to reflect on the harm we may have caused. These religions or Gods have too often made us feel like we’re bad people and we deserve to go to hell.

Another answer: many of us are quasi-universalists–any God worthy of that name loves us and is simply too good to condemn us. We’ve removed God from the judge’s bench in the sky. The all-about-love God, the one to whom we’re willing to pray, no longer sits in judgment of us. God loves us, unconditionally.

And since God loves us, unconditionally, God loves us regardless of how much money we earn (or how we made it and what we do with it) or how many times we’ve been married (even if our kids end up with exponentially-more-difficult lives).

So, is the unconditional-love God really the kind of God we want? Even a liberal Jewish theologian like Martin Buber, who made a principled decision not to attend worship services, imagined that the soul, after death, would be reunited with God (or not) based on the quality of our deeds. The Enlightenment philosopher, Immanuel Kant, no lover of worship services, imagined the afterlife as an opportunity to encounter more situations requiring moral choices; in this way we would get all the time we needed to hone our willingness to do the right thing for the right reasons.

What would Buber or Kant think of a “thoroughly modern” God who is “too busy validating” our particular version of the American dream to care about our moral decisions?

And you, what do you think? Are you troubled by the current trend to triage moral requirements from religiousness (whether yours is a generalized religiousness or a specific-faith-tradition religiousness)?

Next week’s post will take up this issue again and explore the creative approach of the mystical theologian, Julian of Norwich.

References: Ross Douthat, “Dan Brown’s America” in The New York Times online edition,18 May 2009.